In sections 7.3.2.104-107 of the known IEEE 802.11s Draft Standard for WLAN Mesh Networking, version D7.03, a deterministic access mechanism for wireless mesh networks called MCCA (Mesh Coordinated Channel Access) is described.
The time between subsequent DTIM Beacons (Delivery Traffic Indication Message) is divided into a fixed number of MCCA time slots. These time slots can be reserved between neighboring mesh stations. An MCCA reservation, hereinafter also referred to as channel reservation, contains periodic definition of so-called MCCAOPs (MCCA opportunities). An MCCAOP is a continuous set of MCCA time slots that can be used for transmission. The initiator of such a reservation is called the MCCAOP owner, and has the right to transmit during the MCCAOP. The receiver is called the MCCAOP responder.
Due to a distributed nature of a wireless mesh network and due to its shared transmission medium it is necessary that each mesh station distributes its MCCA reservations at least in its 2-hop neighborhood. The reservations are reported by advertisements, which contain reservations of the sending mesh station and, additionally, reservations of its neighboring mesh stations.
In order to enhance a limited opportunity of advertising channel reservations of past drafts of the IEEE 802.11s Draft Standard for WLAN Mesh Networking, it has been proposed to include multiple information fields into an advertisements element according to the standard, each of the information fields including reported MCCAOP reservations. These fields are defined in section 7.3.2.106.3 of the known IEEE 802.11s Draft Standard for WLAN Mesh Networking, version D7.03 as MCCAOP Reservation fields. At the time of the priority date of this application, the detailed structure of advertisements elements has not been finally approved in the draft standard.
Currently, advertised reservations are arbitrarily distributed over advertisement elements. This arbitrary nature bears a couple of significant disadvantages. A major disadvantage lies in a higher data traffic which results from the necessity of advertising a whole set of reservations even in cases when only a minor change in the reservations is to be advertised.